photo by Paula Trotter
Residents of Windsor, Ontario probably know Dan Beaudoin’s house. It’s the one that’s covered in maple leafs and Canadian flags. But they may not know that the inside of “Canada Dan’s” house is even more emblazoned with the emblem of our country than the outside.
Click here to listen to Beaudoin talk about his home, and to take a tour via audio slideshow.
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Windsor at North by Northeast
With 500 bands in 50 venues over five days, Toronto’s North by Northeast festival is a music-lover’s dream. Now in its 15th year, NXNE is one of Canada’s premier music festivals, drawing acts from across the country and around the world. This year, four Windsor bands will take to the stages of Toronto during the festival, which runs June 17 to 21. Here’s a sneak peek at the inner lives of Windsor’s NXNE stars.
The Nice Guys: Michou
photo by Matt Barnes
Probably the worst thing Michou has ever done is steal some pizza.
Michou was on tour in March, staying in the dorm rooms at Carleton University when the guys discovered an “awesome buffet,” says drummer Stefan Cvetkovic. “We paid to get in the first time, but after that we just snuck in.”
When they tried to sneak out, loaded with two or three slices each, they set off an alarm. And so began the pizza banditry incident, involving a wailing siren, a daring escape on longboards through a labyrinth of tunnels and a pursuer on a motorized vacuum.
“I got pizza all over my shirt,” Cvetkovic says. “I guess we got a little greedy.”
But that’s probably the anomalous crime in this band’s history. The guys from Michou are just so nice that you can’t imagine them doing anything worse than stealing pizza. They’ve got that infectious sort of niceness that makes you want to be a better person.
It helps explain why they named one of their albums after Prince Myshkin, the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Myshkin is kind, humble and honest, and tries desperately – almost idiotically – to connect with others.
The band’s lyricist and vocalist, Michael Hargreaves, says he works hard to connect with Michou’s listeners by making his performance as authentic as possible. “You want them to feel what you feel. As a musician, that’s your job. If you don’t figure out how to perform it properly, you’ve failed.”
When the band recorded the song Still Wandering last month for Michou’s upcoming 10-track album, Hargreaves says he was aiming for that sense of closeness. “The mic was almost on my mouth. I sung it very quietly so you can hear every little articulation, down to the saliva.” Hargreaves’s vocals have a trademark arresting intimacy that listeners simply cannot ignore.
The band’s desire to connect with its audience is evident in its hefty web presence, which includes the usual MySpace, Facebook and Twitter pages as well as a WordPress blog and a Wikipedia entry. Michou has also organized events in order to meet some of its listeners in person.
“Instead of just coming to see us play live, let’s become friends,” says Hargreaves. “Let’s not have an RSS fan barrier. We’re not anything special. We’re just guys who make music.”
Those guys will make music at NXNE this week. They say they’re not expecting to “get discovered” by industry reps at the show, but they’re hoping at least to meet some old friends, and maybe get a couple of free pints.
The Philosophers: Yellow Wood
photo by S. Nilsson
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” It’s a line of poetry that Adam Rideout-Arkell says every kid in Nova Scotia would recognize. “It seems like everyone who grew up there studied Robert Frost, but people who grew up in Ontario didn’t,” he says.
Rideout-Arkell and his brother and bandmate, Matthew, spent their childhood in Truro, Nova Scotia, before moving to Windsor when they were in high school.
Frost’s classic poem, “The Road Not Taken,” was the inspiration behind the band’s name, Yellow Wood. Rideout-Arkell explains that in the poem, the yellow wood is the space between the diverging roads, where a decision is made about which path to take.
“The most interesting things in life are the hard decisions, the space in between,” he says. “That struggle, that tension is where the good stuff happens.”
For Rideout-Arkell and his brother, tension and struggle took the form of religion. “Matt and I grew up in a very religious, pentacostal world, so it’s just programmed into us to think about right and wrong.” He says a lot of Yellow Wood’s music is about trying to figure out what’s right and wrong.
“Everyone sort of takes what’s supposed to be right and they don’t think about it. We try to take ideas that you assume to be true and flip them upside-down,” he says.
The trio’s upcoming album, due for release later this year, is called “Sons of the Oppressor.” It’s a shift away from the band’s previous work, which was slower, careful music that made Michou’s Michael Hargreaves call Yellow Wood “one of the most emoting bands I know.”
The band describes the new album as “bold, abrasive, pretty, subtle, bombastic, poignant, base, dancey, epic.” It’s definitely a ramping up of acoustic energy, but the lyrics still tackle tough subjects despite the dance beats.
“Chinese Women Unite” is distorted but catchy – a sound that’s half-party, half-protest, complete with handclaps and lyrics that shout “Unite/pick up your swords and fight.”
Rideout-Arkell says the songs on “Sons of the Oppressor” are about examining “what it means to be descendants of white folk, which means you’re associated with people who were oppressive.”
In the title song from the band’s new album, Rideout-Arkell sings, “Africa/why have you been down for so long?/Is it blackened skin or replicas of empire states we built upon you?”
Rideout-Arkell says those are the sorts of issues Yellow Wood wants to explore in its music. “They’re light-hearted summer pop songs,” he jokes. “Most people don’t really want to go there, but we want to turn the rocks over and look underneath. I like to talk about that stuff, but people usually just want to drink beer.”
The Mad Scientists: StereoGoesStellar
photo by Elyssa Mannina
First, they’ve got a band member with dishevelled “mad scientist” hair. Second, they’re absolute masterminds of their musical laboratory. Third, they pack more syllables into a song than most, which gives their music a frenetic energy that’ll leave you buzzing.
StereoGoesStellar just released its debut, self-titled CD two months ago, but the band already sounds as though it has been concocting its musical potions for years. The band melds the crystalline melodies of Jeremy Coulter’s gentle, almost classical, piano-playing with the driving, aggressive indie-pop sound of the rest of the band.
The five band members begin their alchemy with Coulter’s piano hook and lyrics. “Jeremy comes with the guts and the internal organs and the heart of a song and then we come with the skin and the hair and the eyes. It’s the mad scientist thing,” explains drummer Erik Stenlund.
Coulter relies on writing music to sort out the wrinkles of his everyday life. “I’m a timid person. I don’t like confrontation,” he says. “I use the piano and lyrics and poetry to work things out myself instead of bothering other people. In music I can explore that realm safely.”
When the band plays at Toronto’s North by Northeast festival this week, it’ll be bringing along copies of its new CD. The artwork on that CD deserves a mention, if only because the StereoGoesStellar fivesome had to wrangle a cow to create the image on the back of the packaging.
The band’s sound engineer and producer was sick during the production of the album and requested that an image of a cow be used on the cover. “He was literally hooked up to the I.V. machine as he was telling us what to do,” says Mick Di Maio, guitarist.
So, the band members obliged, and called various dairy farms in the area until they found one that would let them photograph a cow. “I thought it would be really docile,” says Coulter. But it wasn’t.
Di Maio says he was almost bucked by the bovine, and the guys tried to placate it with some hay. The farmer told them it might be co-operative if they mooed at it, but that didn’t work, either. Finally, bassist Keith Howlett managed to put his summer farming experience to work, and they calmed the cow down enough to get a good shot.
Coulter says, “Half of Woodslee showed up to see us city boys trying to wrangle a cow.”
The Contrarians: Orphan Choir
The name of the band conjures an idea of sad beauty, and the subject matter of Orphan Choir’s songs isn’t far off that mark: the tragic story of a 1940s actress, a man trying to cope with the loss of his job, a suicide from heights of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Orphan Choir singer, Jim Meloche, says he finds inspiration all around him. In the three years the band has been together, it has released a string of seven-inch records, but it’s just about to release its debut, self-titled CD.
photo by Gordon Ball
The album, coming out later this summer, features a song about Gene Tierney, a stage and movie actress from the 40s who contracted German measles during a fan signing when she was pregnant. Her child was born severely disabled, and Tierney fell into a deep depression. “I watch a lot of old films and film noir. I was intrigued by her,” says Meloche. “There’s a song on the new album about fame taking its toll on her.”
Another song, inspired by Meloche’s hometown of Windsor, is a fictionalized account of a father who loses his job. “There’s definitely a lot to write about here, as far as growing up in a blue-collar setting or industrial, union-based city and watching that crumble,” he says.
Meloche describes Orphan Choir’s sound as punk, but he’s quick to point out that the punk label doesn’t mean the music is crass. “There’s no swearing on the album,” he says, “and when a band is loosely described as a punk band, that’s a rarity. But I just find that’s lazy writing. I’d rather stretch my vocabulary and the lyrics.”
He writes all the songs for the band, and says his lyrics often make a political statement, but in a subtler way than most punk music. “There’s definitely a little bit of dissent, but not in a way where it’s beaten over your head. It’s a bit more poetic. I prefer to play with words rather than write anthems,’ Meloche says.
When Orphan Choir hits North by Northeast, Meloche says the band will simply focus on having a good time and putting on a good show for its Toronto fans. “I’m happy that Windsor is so well-represented this year at a Canadian festival, with four fairly different genres being represented.”
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Canadian growers a dying breed
Step through the doors of Otto Bulk’s greenhouse, and all you can see under the translucent white roofs are gerberas – red gerberas, pink gerberas, white, yellow and orange gerberas. The candy-coloured blossoms dot the green foliage as far as the eye can see. It’s odd that this enormous greenhouse packed with gerberas is located on a farm called Rosa Flora. There aren’t many roses around here.
“The rose-growing industry is done in Ontario. It’s the pits,” Bulk says.
He’s one of the few remaining commercial rose growers in the province. Bulk started Rosa Flora in Dunnville about 30 years ago. In its first year, the operation was devoted solely to roses – five greenhouses full of them, covering an area equivalent to about one and a half olympic-sized swimming pools.
Bulk has more than five times that area devoted to roses now, but it’s only a small portion of his farm. Rosa Flora’s greenhouse space has blossomed to more than a tenth of a square kilometre, but roses comprise only five per cent of that space today. Among the endless gerberas is just one comparatively small strip of sweetheart roses.
Otto Bulk has adapted his business to reflect the changing flower industry.
Bulk says the rose industry is fraught with too many challenges to keep farmers in the business. Chief among those challenges is cheap imports from South America.
“They have lots of land, flippin’ cheap labour, they don’t have the expense of fuel for heat and lights. How could we compete with that?” Bulk asks.
We can’t, it appears. Only about 10 per cent of roses on the Canadian market are grown in Canada, says Irwin Smith, the executive director of Canada’s floral trade association, Flowers Canada Growers. Most of the rest come from Colombia and Ecuador.
“We’ve been just about killed by the imports. They can drive them up here cheaper than we can grow them,” he says.
In 2006, Canada imported almost 4.1 million dozens of roses from Colombia and 3.9 million dozens from Ecuador.
South American growers have monetary advantages over Canadian growers, Smith says. Colombian and Ecuadorean growers pay their farm workers much lower wages than Canadian farmers. “We have high labour standards, and what we pay in our industry is way above minimum wage.”
When the free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia takes effect – probably later this year – the current 10.5 per cent tariff on Colombian flower imports will be reduced to three per cent. Irwin says that will be another nail in the coffin of Canadian rose growers.
Bulk says the elevation and climate in Colombia and Ecuador afford natural advantages to South American growers. “You’re right by the sun, of course, so you have light from six to six year-round,” says Bulk. “In our climate in the winter, it’s light by seven or eight o’clock and it’s dark by five. We can’t compete with that stuff.”
The expense of providing artificial light inside the greenhouses is only a fraction of the cost of heating them, though. Maintaining a steady temperature of about 18-20 C in a greenhouse the size of three Canadian football fields during a northern winter is no mean task.
Though roses still crowd this greenhouse, they’re a dwindling portion of Rosa Flora’s crops today.
In order to compete with the lower production costs in South America and maximize space, Canadian growers increase the density of roses in their greenhouses. Bulk says Rosa Flora aims to produce 200 stems per square metre, whereas growers in Colombia and Ecuador produce only 100 in the same area. The additional space gives each rose more room for growth and results in larger flower heads.
And that’s appealing to customers.
“The customer looks at what’s the nicest quality. They aren’t concerned that I cannot make money,” says Bulk. “They’re looking around saying, ‘Where can I buy my roses from the best and the cheapest?’ ”
That’s exactly what Phil Cragg has on his mind when he purchases roses for Bloomex, one of Canada’s largest online cut flower retailers. Cragg is the corporate sales manager for Bloomex, and says “pretty much 100 per cent” of the flowers he orders are from South America.
Imported roses have much larger heads and a higher petal count, Cragg says. “I don’t want to piss off Canadian growers – the Canadian roses are beautiful. But to me, there isn’t a comparison.”
The roses from Colombia and Ecuador are flown out on “big cargo planes full of boxes of flowers,” says Cragg. The planes land in Miami, “a massive hub for the industry,” he says. “Hundreds of millions of stems of floral product go through there every day.”
The flowers are then inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for diseases and pests and screened by customs for illicit substances. “I used to get pinpricks in my roses when I owned stores. That was customs checking to see if there was anything in there, any creative smuggling,” Cragg says.
Next, the roses are transferred to refrigerated trucks, which crawl along the network of highways that covers North America like a spider’s web. After a day or so on the road, the flowers are delivered to wholesalers and retailers in every corner of the continent.
“I place my order on a Friday, it’s cut on a Saturday, arrives in Miami on a Sunday, departs from Miami on Monday and arrives in our Toronto warehouse on Tuesday night,” explains Cragg.
That’s about five days from Bogota to Toronto. Otto Bulk says he can send roses from Dunnville to New York City in just nine hours. He also ships to Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland and Minneapolis. So, why do flower wholesalers such as Bloomex – a mere hour from Rosa Flora’s greenhouses – choose imports from Colombia?
“It’s probably double the price to buy Canadian,” says Cragg.
Nick Barrett, a sales representative for Mex Y Can, Canada’s largest flower importer, says Canadian rose producers can’t supply enough flowers to meet the demand. For Valentine’s Day – the biggest day of the year for rose sales – Mex Y Can imported about one million stems in one week.
“There’s not even close to enough to cover everybody,” Barrett says. “There’s not many growers doing roses here at all.”
Barrett is right. More and more Canadian producers are dropping out the business. Just a few years ago, Leamington, Ont., had five commercial rose growers. Today, there are none.
Gerberas are now one of Bulk’s primary crops.
The story is much the same in Canada’s other rose-growing hotspot, British Columbia. Tom Mulleder, the executive manager of grower relations for the United Flower Growers Co-operative Association, says 12 years ago, the co-op used to have about 10 local rose suppliers.
“Now, we’re down to two,” Mulleder says. “The consumer talks a big talk about supporting ‘Grown In Canada,’ but when it comes to them laying the money on the table, they look at price.”
Otto Bulk knows he’s part of a dying breed. The roses in his greenhouses have, over the years, been replaced by other flowers such as alstroemeria, snapdragons and gerberas – flowers with softer petals that are too delicate to be hauled across hemispheres before hitting the florist’s shelves. “Slowly but surely, we said, ‘We have to get out,’ ” Bulk says. “It’s just too costly.”
Bulk isn’t sure how much longer Rosa Flora will stay true to its name. Sweetheart roses still occupy a portion of his greenhouse, but perhaps not for long, he says.
“In another five years, those could be gone, too.”
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Photo by Jacob Whittaker courtesy of Flickr
Mating, scavenging animals cause spike in roadkill
Squished skunks, crushed cats and pulverized possums are all part of a day’s work for Ted Brodie. When he gets the call from the City of London’s dispatch service, he sets out with his half-ton truck, some plastic bags and a shovel.
“Sometimes I’ll just pick them up with my gloves on, but sometimes you need the shovel,” he says. “And if it’s real bad, you need boots to make sure you don’t get anything splashed on you.”
Brodie is London’s go-to guy for roadkill and other deceased animals found on city property. When a resident reports a dead animal, the city calls Brodies Ltd. to remove it. Brodie has six hours during weekdays and 12 on nights and weekends to retrieve the animal.
He says he gets two to four calls every day to pick up animals such as cats, dogs, raccoons, possums, skunks and rabbits. Spring is the busiest time for pickups, Brodie says. “The young ones get out and they don’t know what cars are yet.”
Jack Millar, a professor of biology at the University of Western Ontario, says squirrels are commonly found dead this time of year because they’re actively looking for food. “Their food base is low, so they need to be out moving around. And they’re not very bright.”
Raccoons – one of the most common wild animals found in the city – don’t hibernate, but they do “hunker down” for the winter, says Millar. “When they come out, they’re not very agile. They’re just a little wobbly.”
He says when they do become active again after the winter months, raccoons are busy mating. “They’re distracted. They have a lot of other things on their mind. They’re all in love. That’s why we see them smucked on the road.”
Brodie says after about seven years on the job, he has gotten used to the work. “Most of (the calls) are pretty straightforward. Once in a while you’ll get a call to pick up a dog that’s been involved in a drug bust. If the police shoot the dog or if there’s a fire and a dog or cat has been lost in the fire, we have to pick that up too.”
After picking up the deceased animals, Brodie places them in garbage bags and puts them in the back of his pickup truck. “Don’t go snooping around in the back of my truck,” he warns.
From there, he transports the animals to a storage facility. “It’s just a regular freezer like you’d have in your basement,” Brodie says. After a few weeks, when the freezer is full, he puts the animals back in his truck and heads over to the landfill site, where they’re buried under other garbage and covered with clay, wood or shingles.
Pat McLennan, assistant to the environmental programs director for the City of London, says Brodie is responsible only for picking up animals on city property; dead animals on private property are the responsibility of property owners.
The city spends about $30,000 each year to collect deceased animals. Last year, 862 animals were retrieved, and in 2007 there were 1,070 animals collected. Because of the cost of the service, McLennan’s office won’t dispatch Brodie for animals under a certain weight limit.
So most squirrels, rats and small birds are left by the wayside. Dead blue jays and crows, however, are retrieved in order to contain the risk of West Nile virus. McLennan says it’s important to collect deceased animals both for sanitation reasons and simply to keep the city looking attractive.
“We certainly don’t want to traumatize our children when they’re walking home from school,” she says. “Mother Nature does take care of some of them. It’s the circle of life. But it’s not pretty.”
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Photo by hubb-a-dubbs (courtesy of Flickr)
Dear Eggnog,
I can hardly believe this is happening again.
I thought we had something special. I thought maybe, this time, it would last.
But I was wrong. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid. But then, how could I possibly have resisted you?
When I first saw you there in December, sitting on the metal shelf inside the supermarket fridge, I did a double-take. You stood out from all the other dairy products, all dressed up in your red and yellow carton, pine boughs festooning your midriff, a shiny red cap perched jauntily on your head. You were stunning.
I walked over, almost too nervous to approach you. But I mustered up the courage to open the door and hold you in my hand. I read your label under the fluorescent lights to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. It was true. It was really you.
You looked the same always – perfect and promising. But, there was something a little different – something new since the last time I had seen you. It was a little notice telling me that you’re a source of dietary fibre. I laughed. You’ve always been good at making me laugh.
I brought you home. I removed your cap and took in your silky, creamy smoothness. Your sweet, rich taste.
We had so many good times together, Eggnog. I introduced you to my friends – coffee, whiskey and rum. You mingled with your dairy product acquaintances in my blender and emerged anew as a milkshake, glistening and refreshed. I spiced things up with a bit of nutmeg. You were always so willing to try new things.
And then, one day, you . . . you just disappeared. I looked everywhere for you, Eggnog. I ran from supermarket to supermarket, searching the refrigerators in a panic. I thought, maybe, the managers had moved you to a special unit because your beauty warranted its own display case.
But you weren’t in the supermarkets.
So I wandered the streets, sad and desperate, hoping to run into you in every corner store. But you weren’t there, either. I couldn’t even find you at Starbucks.
Eggnog, I just don’t understand what happened between us. I thought things were going so well. I thought you were happy. I tried so hard to make things work.
I was your most valiant defender when people teased you, calling you “Chicken Milk.” I stood up for you when people said you were too fatty. And I trumpeted your glorious history when those snooty, modern low-fat and soy-based imposters tried to impersonate you.
The chill of January has only just begun, and already I am weary of it. Without you here with me to cheer me up at the end of the day, things just aren’t the same.
I just hope that someday, somehow, you’ll come back to me. I want you to know that there’s an empty spot in my heart and in my refrigerator now that you’re gone.
Wherever you are, Eggnog, I hope you’re safe, happy and refrigerated.
Your friend,
Frances
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Photo by Moon Rhythm (from Flickr)
I’m Too Sexy For This Shingle:
In 2004, a group of Pride Day revellers gathered for a party on Creighton Street in Halifax and were unexpectedly treated to a display of hermaphrodite slug sex. The friends watched in amazement as a real-life The Nature of Things episode unfolded before their eyes. Simone, Caleb, and Sonia tell the story.
Runs: 6:00
Please note that this audio piece contains a few curse words. Protect tender ears.
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Val Williams has about 50 dead baby mice in her freezer at home. Every morning, she pulls a couple out and massages the furry, white creatures until they’ve loosened up enough. They’re breakfast for her sizable collection of snakes.
She dangles a mouse in front of a snake. An instant later, the snake is clenching the mouse in its mouth. Very slowly, beginning with the mouse’s face, the snake starts to swallow it. Soon, only the mouse’s pink hind legs and tail protrude. And then, even they’re gone. “They’re very neat eaters,” says Williams. “They never leave any crumbs.”
Known as “The Snake Lady” to generations of London-area students, Williams, 74, has been showing off her snakes at schools, museums, and parties for about 36 years. She also brings along a handful of hissing cockroaches, some foot-long millipedes, a couple of tarantulas, tortoises, and newts, and, for good measure, “Fluffy,” her bearded dragon. And this is only part of her collection of animals.
Val Williams shows off one of her snakes to a classroom of kids.
Williams conducts about 12 sessions per month, travelling as far as Owen Sound and Collingwood. Yesterday, she travelled to Our Lady of Lourdes School in Delaware to take part in the annual school fair.
“I can’t smile today because I left my teeth at home,” she tells the children. But her colourful personality makes up for the lack of smiles today. She picks up a tarantula and strokes its fuzzy body. “Aren’t you a little sweetie?” she says.
Williams is a natural with children. “The kids really like her,” says Amanda Branton, the public programs manager at the London Regional Children’s Museum. Williams has been bringing her beasts there for about 30 years, drawing crowds of up to 300 people. “She’s so passionate about what she does, especially the conservation aspect of it. It’s a good environmental education for the kids.”
Williams says draining bogs, paving over farmland, and clear cutting are some of the main culprits of declining species populations. “There’s a lot of stuff we still need to learn,” says Williams. “Whether we will or not is anybody’s guess, and what the planet will be like when I die, I don’t think I want to know.”
The most rewarding aspect of her job is changing perceptions about cold-blooded creatures, says Williams. “I love it when people tell me, ‘Before I met you I was terrified of snakes, and you’ve completely changed my mind,’” she says.
Williams never planned to exhibit amphibians for a living. She says she “fell in love” with her first tortoise, Tony, when she was just a toddler. She bought, found, and was given animals over the years, and now has an entire room in her house devoted to them – a room far away from her husband, who is afraid of snakes.
Williams studied art rather than invertebrate zoology, but has gained a vast knowledge of animals from books, other collectors, and by trial and error. “Never buy a termite-eating frog,” she advises. “They’re a beautiful magenta and black, but unless you can get the termites, don’t get the frog.”
She started making public presentations after someone found out about her collection and asked her to teach children about them. She retired from her career as a graphic designer just four years ago, but admits that she spent more time showing snakes than designing in her later years. She spends about two hours a day feeding the animals, refilling their water, and cleaning cages.
Most of the money she makes from the presentations goes into buying food and cages for the animals. Breeding animals would be a more profitable venture, says Williams.
If there are any dangers on the job, it’s her pets who are in peril. No children have ever been bitten or stung by her animals, but once about three years ago, a boy bit one of her snakes. The reptile died from its wounds three months later.
Williams says she’ll keep working as long as she can. “It’s a lifelong commitment. I simply can’t imagine my life without animals.”
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She’s wearing a crash helmet, wrist guards, elbow pads, knee pads, and lacy, fluorescent green underwear. Her underwear match her fingernails and the green and black striped knee-high socks that are pulled over her fishnet stockings. She’s “Commiekaze.” She’s a derby girl.
For a derby girl, she looks tame. “Commiekaze,” or Anastasia Obrotova, doesn’t have any of the visible tattoos, piercings, or heavy black eye makeup that adorn many of her teammates. Give her time, though – this is just her first game, or “bout,” with the Thames Fatales roller derby team.
“I’m excited and nervous. As long as I don’t get taken out on a stretcher, I’m good,” said the 21-year-old Fanshawe College student before a recent bout against the London Thrashers at Western Fair’s Canada Building.
Roller derby is a young sport in London. The Forest City Derby Girls, London’s derby league, was born about two years ago, starting with just one team, the London Thrashers. As more women became interested in playing, the league added a second team, the Thames Fatales.
The amateur league is volunteer-run, with about 25 players and another 30 volunteers who help organize games and tournaments as far away as Montreal. Players range in age from 19 to 45, and include bankers, librarians, students, and mothers. They all squeeze roller derby into their busy schedules, with two-hour practices once a week and tournaments several times a year.
“There’s definitely a draw to seeing women play a full contact sport,” said Kristin Hendrick, the marketing and public relations chair of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “It’s new, fresh, intriguing, and maybe controversial.”
The WFTDA is a U.S.-based organization that sets standardized rules for derby, gives guidance to new leagues, and helps promote the sport. It’s the only national roller derby body in the world, says Hendrick.
Members of London's roller derby team are decked out and ready to derby.
Derby’s growth in London is emblematic of the sport’s increasing popularity across North America. Canada has about 17 leagues from Vancouver to Halifax. In the U.S. today there are 56 leagues – almost double the number that existed just four years ago, says Hendrick.
Recently, WFTDA opened membership to Canada for the first time, and both Hamilton’s and Montreal’s leagues are in the process of applying for WFTDA membership. For Canadians, being a WFTDA member means getting a chance to be ranked among other leagues and to play against more established and skilled teams.
The face of roller derby hasn’t changed much since its heyday in the seventies. It’s still got a bit of the camp and drama that packed the bleachers back then, when roller derby was like wrestling on wheels – half sport and half entertainment.
At halftime in a recent show-down between the London Thrashers and the Thames Fatales comes a spectacle called “Roll the Dice of Sacrifice.” A derby girl brings out a giant black fuzzy dice with activities listed on each of its six sides. “Mirambo” calls on a boy from the audience to roll the dice, and it lands on “Pillow Fight.”
“Mirambo” and “Jemicide” begin to batter each other with pillows, and within a minute, the two are writhing on the floor in the centre of the track, fishnets and skates flying. When the pillow fight ends, “Mirambo” has a sprained ankle and “Jemicide” has been sent to the hospital after receiving a roller skate in her eye.
Though this kind of violence is unusual and against the rules – both players were required to sit out the rest of the bout – roller derby is definitely not dainty. Many league members speak of injuries sustained on the track, including bruised tailbones, dislocated shoulders, and concussions.
“The ultimate roller girl trophy – other than the actual trophy – is the fishnet burns and the broken bones and the scars,” said “Mirambo,” or Miranda Lee-Tuckey Hannam. Because it’s a contact sport, a certain degree of discomfort is expected, said the 29-year-old deli worker. “It takes a special breed of woman to do this. I like to kick ass. I get out all my agression. I can beat these guys up and they still talk to me at the end of the day.”
Sonja Leal, whose derby name is “Sufferjet,” has had blood vessels broken in her thumb after someone skated over her hand. “This is not fake,” said Leal, 32. “Everything is real. If a girl gets in a fight and gets punched in the face, that’s real. If you get elbowed in the eye, that’s a penalty.”
Leal is the president of the Forest City Derby Girls and a jammer for the Thames Fatales, who lost the game 85-83. At five foot one and 106 pounds, Leal, a banker and a mother, is tiny compared to some of her teammates and competitors. “Some of these women are five foot eight and 280 pounds, and they’re hitting me. The key is, I’m fast and they’re not.” Leal says roller derby is a fine balance of skill, athleticism, and show.
The audience at the most recent bout seems to be a mix of hardcore derby fans and curious onlookers. A woman walks by with a “Derby Mom” T-shirt, fluorescent signs in the audience scream out support for team members, and the crowd shouts every time a skater falls.
During the halftime scuffle, a middle-aged woman yells out, “Punch her in the face!” But the audience just isn’t vocal enough for some players. A team member skates by the bleachers waving her arms, trying to incite the crowd to make some noise. “This isn’t a library, folks!” she yells. The crowd of about 400 cheers in response.
Miranda Lee-Tuckey Hannam says many of the league’s new players get involved in the sport after watching a bout from the bleachers. “That’s how we get all our new girls. Derby makes automatic fans.”
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